London’s Mayor has written a barnstorming article for today’s Telegraph, complaining at the inflated cost of wine that will greet him and his diminished pounds on his forthcoming skiing holiday in France:

"I will be forced to sip that drink miserably, nursing it in a corner,
while all around me hearty red-faced skiers from euroland will be
singing shanties and calling for more, slapping their relatively
un-devalued banknotes on the counter."

"Why is the pound at a 12-year low against a basket of other OECD currencies? Who is to blame for the cost of my vin chaud? I
tell you who: it’s you, Gordon. You did it, by running the largest
budget deficit in the world, now hanging round all our necks at more
than £100 billion. You wasted all that money in
the good times, water-cannoning our dosh with so little thought or
restraint that only Hungary, Pakistan and Egypt are suffering from
comparable indebtedness, and Hungary and Pakistan are already in the
hands of the IMF. You weakened the pound, Gordon, because you expanded the public sector without reforming it. You
weakened the pound because you bloated the state pay-roll, and then you
added the private finance initiative and the nationalisation of the
Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock, and all the time you somehow
believed your own lunatic propaganda that you had personally defied the
laws of economic gravity."

And in words which, we hope, will reach the party’s new Chief Waste Finder, Oliver Letwin, Boris – who has frozen the Mayor’s share of council tax since coming to office – highlights public sector profligacy:

"Why are we still spending hundreds of millions on a new register of
every child in the country? Why are we squandering billions on ID
cards? Why does the Government still spend £800 million on advertising
public sector appointments – very often in the Guardian – when they
could be conveniently displayed online?"